Eida Chareidis handcuffs kids to protest Draft

On Vigilantism & AMI's embarrassing Editorial

Vos Iz Neias by Rabbi Yair Hoffman   With due respect, I would like to take issue with Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter’s recent editorial (Ami Magazine p. 8 July 11, 2012) regarding religious vigilantism, Jewish history, and bloggers.  Rabbi Frankfurter has distinguished himself as a highly intelligent thinker on the Jewish scene, with a sensitivity to the Torah’s values on some very important issues that have arisen in our community. 

Nonetheless, it is my feeling that he has taken an incorrect position in this editorial on the issue of recent acts of religiously motivated vigilantism that have been highlighted in the media, primarily in Israel, but even here in New York

Rabbi Frankfurter writes, “contrary to what some bloggers might think, religious vigilantism over Jewish history was not an altogether negative phenomenon.”

It must be clearly understood that “vigilantism” was never a protective shield.  It has always undermined the notion of law and order and is antithetical to one of the principal notions of the seven Noachide laws – the establishment of a legal system.  Indeed, even the killing of Zimri by Pinchas, as Rabbi Frankfurter paradoxically points out, was not an act of vigilantism – the Halacha itself clearly dictates that Kanaim Pogim Bo is part of the Torah’s system of jurisprudence.

30% of sex crimes target minors

YNET  The Knesset's Committee on the Status of Women is set to debate a new report on how the school system deals with sexual violence, Ynet learned Monday.

The report states that 30% out of the crisis centers' 40,000 reports of sexual assaults in 2011 involved children under the age of 12. Almost half of the reports were of rape or attempted rape, some 25% were reports of incest and 20% were of sexual harassment.

The report also includes police statistics about sexual violence: In 2011, 4,563 sexual assault complaints were filed, 47% of them by minors.

In 20% of the cases, the suspect was a minor. In 18% of the cases, the assaults allegedly took place on school grounds. 

HaPeles challenges Yated's leadership

JPost  A new chapter has been opened in the struggle for public opinion among the haredi community, with the publication of Israel’s newest daily newspaper, HaPeles, on Friday.

Following the recent power struggle over the influential Yated Ne’eman haredi daily, HaPeles was published on Friday to compete for the ear of the target audience, members of the non-hassidic “Lithuanian” haredi community.

HaPeles, whose editor-inchief is Grossman, means straight or level, which Labin says reflects the desire to present straight and direct opinions and perspectives on the haredi world.

The upheaval at Yated Ne’eman, the most important paper in the haredi world, occurred as a result of a broader struggle for the leadership of the community – in light of the continued hospitalization and incapacitation of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, 102, the undisputed leader of non-hassidic haredim until now.

Rav Bulman's 10thYahrtzeit - R Malinowitz & R' Leff

Tonight in Jerusalem Rav Chaim Malinowitz and Rav Zeff Leff discussed the legacy of Rav Bulman in the connection with the issue of 

"The Role of English Speaking Kehillos in Eretz Yisrael"

The were introducted by Rav Bulman's son. Rav Berkowitz was unable to attend because he is an avel.

This is the recording of the event - there are a few minutes missing from the Introduction

Click following link to play or to download

Mp3 audio file 44 meg

Who will comfort us now? by Toby Katz

Economic & family deficits from being unmarried

NYTimes  Jessica Schairer has so much in common with her boss, Chris Faulkner, that a visitor to the day care center they run might get them confused.

 They are both friendly white women from modest Midwestern backgrounds who left for college with conventional hopes of marriage, motherhood and career. They both have children in elementary school. They pass their days in similar ways: juggling toddlers, coaching teachers and swapping small secrets that mark them as friends. They even got tattoos together. Though Ms. Faulkner, as the boss, earns more money, the difference is a gap, not a chasm. 

But a friendship that evokes parity by day becomes a study of inequality at night and a testament to the way family structure deepens class divides. Ms. Faulkner is married and living on two paychecks, while Ms. Schairer is raising her children by herself. That gives the Faulkner family a profound advantage in income and nurturing time, and makes their children statistically more likely to finish college, find good jobs and form stable marriages. 

Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.

Millions of Africans view themselves Jews

YNet  Millions of African citizens could come knocking on Israel's door in the next few years, demanding to be recognized as Jews, warns Dr. Shalva Weil. According to Weil, the past 15 years have seen a sharp rise in the number of tribes throughout Africa who are "rediscovering" their Jewish heritage.

Weil, from the Research Institute for Innovation in Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is an anthropologist and expert on Ethiopian Jewry who has spent years studying the Ethiopian community and its acclimation into Israeli society.

Weil explains that every one of the African groups has a unique story. For example, the Lemba people of South Africa, Zimbabwe and in Mozambique and Malawi numbers some 70,000 Christians, but its leaders claim that they are the descendants of Yemenite Jews who migrated to South Africa. The Lemba people are seeking recognition as the descendants of Jews and have even appealed to the South African Jewish community for financial support to build synagogues.

"Internet makes us crazy"- The Misuse of Poor Science

Time Magazine   Sociologists call them moral panics — when a population pins its unanchored fear in uncertain times on a selected demon, whether or not the target is really a threat to society. Drugs are a frequent focus of these societal anxiety attacks, but this week, Newsweek tries to foment a classic panic against a more universal foe: the Internet.

Headlined online “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” the article begins with the story of Jason Russell, the filmmaker behind the “Kony2012″ video about the African cult-leader and warlord Joseph Kony. After the video went viral and suddenly brought Russell international fame, he wound up naked and ranting on a San Diego street corner. To make the case that the Internet caused Russell’s psychotic break, the Newsweek article rapidly generalizes from rare, extreme experiences like Russell’s and wends through a selective reading of the research to argue, in the words of one quoted source, that the Net, “encourages — and even promotes — insanity.”

The problem is, this conclusion runs counter to what the research data actually show.

Dokoupil makes much of brain scan studies suggesting that Internet use “rewires” the brain in ways that look similar to changes seen in drug addiction. The reality is that any enjoyable activity leads to changes in the brain’s pleasure regions if a person engages in it frequently enough. Indeed, any activity we perform repeatedly will lead to brain changes: that’s known as learning. Riding a bicycle and playing the violin also rewire the brain, but we don’t choose to refer to these changes as “damage.”

As yet, there is no brain scan that can clearly determine whether certain brain changes signify addiction or simple, harmless enjoyment. Nor can brain scans predict, in the case of addiction, who will be able to regain control over their behavior and who will not. [...]

The truth is, we really don’t know much about how our online lives are affecting us. It’s quite possible that Internet use has the deleterious effects critics suggest — certainly some people do have difficulty controlling the amount of time they spend online. But is it the addictive effect of the Internet that keeps us checking our work emails on vacation or during evenings and weekends — or is it the fact that we fear we may lose our jobs if we don’t?

The Internet might indeed be a cause of our societal worries, but not necessarily because we’re addicted to it. And creating a moral panic based on flimsy evidence isn’t going to help, no matter what the real cause of our problems.

California: Should a child have 4 legal parents?

NYTimes  Bill Delaney’s two little girls spend three nights a week with their fathers, at the home Mr. Delaney shares with his husband in San Francisco. The other nights, they stay with their mothers, a lesbian couple who live nearby. 

The girls have four parents — a result of a kind of nontraditional family arrangement that has become increasingly common. But officially, California, like most other states, recognizes no more than two legal parents.  

That limit could soon be lifted.

A bill moving through the California Legislature would allow judges to recognize more than two legal parents for a given child, opening the door for alternative families to seek legal recognition of their relationships.

Alleged attacker of women in Bnei Brak captured

.kikarhashabat.

האם נעצר התוקף הסדרתי שמאיים על שלוותן של תושבות בני-ברק? בחודשים האחרונים התרחשו מספר רב של תקיפת נערות חרדיות, בעיקר באזור שבו פועלים אולמי השמחות בעיר התורה.

המותקפות סיפרו על צעיר בלבוש חסידי, שתקף אותן בשעות הערב בסימטאות ובחדרי מדרגות. עסקנים שמעו על כך, נחרדו מהעדויות ומיהרו לערב את משטרת מרחב ירקון, ובראשה את אלברט אוחיון

אתמול, הגיעה החקירה לנקודת מפנה משמעותית. בעקבות מידע מודיעיני הגיעה המשטרה לישיבה חסידית מוכרת בבני-ברק ועצרה את אחד הבחורים בזמן ארוחת הערב.

כשהחשוד הבחין בכוחות המשטרה, הוא נמלט לחדר האוכל - שם הסתיים המרדף הקצר במעצרו.

בחקירתו, הודה החשוד במעורבות בכמה מהתקיפות, אולם המשטרה חושדת שהתמונה רחבה עוד יותר.

5 indicted in haredi website 'extortion' affair

JPost  Police announced Thursday it had found sufficient evidence to warrant an indictment against five suspects in the Hadrei Haredim website extortion affair.

Police suspected that over the last two years, the five members of staff working for the haredi news site extorted large sums of money from businessmen, rabbis, organizations and large companies, who paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The five suspects comprise the director-general of the website, his deputy and three other employees.

The suspects allegedly threatened to publish content that would damage people's reputations unless they paid them large sums of money.

Rav Sternbuch - Psak to Report Molester

A clear Psak requiring Reporting is needed to stop Abuse

I just finished a long trans-Atlantic call with an American rav whose grandson was recently abused in a shul in Europe during davening. He was distressed by a number of developments besides the fact that his grandson had been abused. 1) the community rav who had been consulted said that the perpetrator had suffered enough embarrassment already and thus nothing more should be done. The rav stated clearly that the matter should be dropped and if the police were involved it would be mesira. He was clearly ignorant of the rulings of Rav Eliashiv and other gedolim on the matter. 2) Despite this the parents reported the abuse to the police  - but they didn't seem interested in getting involved either.  3) To make the matter more distressing the family has been informed that the alleged abuser has been observed  in the past - touching kids inappropriately in the mikveh - but nothing was done. 4) The parents of the child are now being harassed and threatened by the community as trouble makers and informants.

This American rav is well aware of the halachic and psychological issues and suggested something which is very simple - but should be very effective in changing the dynamics of the situation. Most people would have no problem of reporting if they witnessed a child being raped or severely beaten. In fact they probably would physically intervene to stop the abuse. The events of Penn State have hopefully taught us that good people don't act unless they know that they must act and are informed in advance what constitutes abuse. Similarly most rabbonim today acknowledge the importance of reporting abuse - to the local rabbi or police - but they would not necessarily recognize that inappropriate touching or fondling is abuse

Therefore the American rav suggested that the community needs that important poskim publicly proclaim in a written declaration what actions constitute abuse that we need to report. The  proclamation must state clearly and unambiguously that abuse is wrong - even if it doesn't involve rape. It must list the halachic requirements to prevent harm by reporting. And finally it needs a clear and unambiguous list of specific actions that constitute abuse that need to be reported.

Here is a tentative text regarding what is abuse:

You must report the following to your rav and/or police department. If you see a child being touched  inappropriately in the mikveh, playground, summer camp or school or neighbor's home. Not only must you report inappropriate adult fondling of a child - but also such actions between  children - even if they are the same age. You must report not only what you yourself observe but also when you hear rumors or your children tell you - it needs to be reported in order to verify and stop it. In sum - all awareness of abuse that you know about -  must be reported to someone. However it is not enough to just report that you witnessed or heard about abuse. If the person you report to doesn't follow through - whether it is a parent, teacher, principal, rav or police - you must persist either with that authority or find someone else who will listen and act. It is clear that a child's well being is not to be sacrificed to avoid chilul hashem, financial loss to a yeshiva or synagogue, or the embarrassment to the family of the abuser or even a prison sentence for the perpetrator. There is no prohibition of lashon harah to report these issues, nor is there a prohibition of mesira. A Rav or community leader is obligated to listen to any and all alleged incidents of abuse. Every member of the community is obligated to make sure that children are protected and that perpetrators are stopped.

Superbus fined for asking girl to move to back

YNET  Superbus transportation company will pay NIS 13,000 (some $3,200) in compensations to Ariella Marsden, a 15-year-old high school student who was asked by a bus driver to move to the back of the bus in order to allow two haredi men to sit in the front.

During her testimony, Marsden described the chain of events, saying she boarded the bus on the way back from school with two of her friends and sat in the front. Shortly afterwards, two haredi men boarded the bus and stood in the front, even tough there were vacant seats in the back. According to Marsden, the driver then asked her and her friends to move to the back of the bus, and they complied. However, by that time there were no empty seats and the three were forced to stand for the duration of the ride.

Attorney Orly Erez- Lahovski from the Israel Religious Action Center said "the verdict is another step in the battle against the exclusion of women in the public transportation system, and sends a message to drivers and company owners that discrimination is not only illegal, but will also be costly.